Distrust and skepticism are required for keeping society humming or progressing. However, for example, if Project 2025 wants to abolish the department of education, and the plan for replacing it is "who cares?", I'll be instead listening to someone else's ideas for improving our education system.

I'm not going to absolve America or the world writ large of personal responsibility for their wilful idiocy, but there has been a coordinated effort to undermine the legitimacy and the trust we place in the institutions that got us to our zenith. The people most heavily funding extremist disinformation campaigns doing said undermining are billionaires, and all while they're building off-the-grid doomsday bunkers. They know they're destroying society. I guess they delight in it or something, I can't really figure that part out, it's related to the classic "does becoming a billionaire fundamentally corrupt almost everyone?" or "is becoming a billionaire selecting for sociopathic psychos?" chick-egg question.

edit: and yeah, like 'bl00 mentions, obviously the close messaging alignment of one party with Russia is, um, illustrative.